DENNIS LENNOX: Trump's playbook won't help GOP win

By DENNIS LENNOX/@DennisLennox

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

NOVI — Business mogul and television personality Donald Trump brought the true believers to a Republican Party fundraiser held in Novi Tuesday evening, raising critical funds for the party as it prepares to defend its grip on the governor’s mansion and both houses of the Legislature in next year’s election.

Speaking to more than 2,000 attendees at the Oakland County Republican Party Lincoln Day Dinner, Trump doubled down on the kind of blunt commentary that has propelled him to national controversy on numerous times.

“I tell it like it is,” Trump told reporters in a pre-speech media scrum before noting the party’s tone and messaging problem on issues such as immigration. “I think calling them illegals — that’s a very harsh word to use.”

By acknowledging words matter, Trump was a bit ironic, but it was even more ironic to hear him repeatedly refer to immigrants, be they legal or otherwise, as “those people” moments after admitting the party cannot find a governing national majority.

The chatter among those attending the dinner, which also included remarks from Gov. Rick Snyder and Attorney General Bill Schuette, wasn’t all positive.

Many of the attendees, a who’s who of state GOP politics, could be heard expressing their disappointment that Trump was the after-dinner speaker.

While local Republican leaders went to great lengths to emphasize Trump was brought in for “entertainment value,” as one senior official put it, the absence of a fresh voice was telling.

He delivered what appeared to be an unscripted speech that was mostly focused on himself, with occasional references to Mitt Romney’s loss in the presidential race, and the economic threat posed by China and Brazil.

What he didn’t do was say anything that remotely appealed to the voters who have eluded Republicans in major races here in Oakland County, which while once reliably Republican has gone Democratic for president in every election since 1992.

Without a win in this county, it is nearly impossible for Michigan GOP hopefuls to offset Detroit, where Democrats win with Saddam Hussein-like margins of victory.

Achieving a win in Oakland County or in other purple-tinted communities across the country requires a party to preach once again to the unconverted and not the bald, fat, old-white-man demographic.

It requires an admission that the electoral playbook that propelled Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980 no longer works today.

Winning next year, in 2016 and beyond will require Republicans to begin looking and talking like the America of the second decade of the 21st century.

Doing this requires someone who appeals to those outside the Trump wing of the Republican Party.

There are a whole generation of leaders with fresh faces and fresh voices — the likes of Susana Martinez, Scott Walker and Mary Fallin nationally — who can begin appealing to the sort of voters who actually decide elections.

After all, winning must be the goal of the Republican Party.

Unfortunately, there are some who don’t want to win, because defeat gives them a bigger platform.